Panel to investigate secret withdrawal of public files at National Archives

By Christopher Lee

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — A congressional committee will look into a secret program under which federal intelligence agencies have withdrawn thousands of historical documents from public access at the National Archives, even though the records had been declassified.

"We are spending literally millions and millions of dollars to keep secrets from ourselves," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the Government Reform subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations. "We've got a huge problem."......

CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department and the Justice Department participated.........Many of the records date to the 1940s and '50s, and their continued disclosure would pose no conceivable security risk, said historians who obtained copies of the records before reclassification.

Some documents include old Cold War intelligence analyses and studies of political affairs in Mexico in the 1960s........"This isn't the first instance I've run into where intelligence agencies and the Pentagon and other government agencies have used classification to cover up faux pas,"

Do independent and centrist voters need any more proof now that one party government has proven to be a failure because it breeds almost daily abuses of power and attempts to prevent oversight of those in power? Just look at this from Glenn Greenwald:

Frist specifically threatened that if the Committee holds NSA hearings, he will fundamentally change the 30-year-old structure and operation of the Senate Intelligence Committee so as to make it like every other Committee, i.e., controlled and dominated by Republicans to advance and rubber-stamp the White House’s agenda rather than exercise meaningful and nonpartisan oversight........

Marvel at the desperate and truly radical means which Frist is invoking in order to block an investigation into the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping program. To threaten to abolish the 30-year-old consensus for how the Senate Intelligence Committee functions – all in order to protect the Bush Administration from scrutiny and oversight – is truly extraordinary, and is unquestionably the conduct of individuals who are seeking to prevent scrutiny in order to conceal wrongdoing. Such threats are particularly unfathomable in light of the fact that the motion for hearings will pass only if it has the support of Republicans on the Committee......

--Alternate Brain: "So when do we go out in the streets? I mean, Frist is saying he is willing to bring this nation one step, a big step, closer to a dictatorship/monarchy. How long will we sit back and do nothing? Will it take the '06 elections stolen? Will it take another terror attack in the U.S.? Or will we just roll over and play dead?"....

WASHINGTON — Despite the US Constitution’s guarantee of public trials, nearly all records are being kept secret for more than 5,000 defendants who completed their journey through the federal courts over the last three years.

Instances of such secrecy more than doubled from 2003 to 2005.

An Associated Press investigation found, and court observers agree, that most of these defendants are cooperating government witnesses, but the secrecy surrounding their records prevents the public from knowing details of their plea bargains with the government........

The data show a sharp increase in secret case files over time as the Bush administration’s well-documented reliance on secrecy in the executive branch has crept into the federal courts through the war on drugs, anti-terrorism efforts and other criminal matters.

“This follows the pattern of this administration,” said John Wesley Hall, an Arkansas defence attorney and second vice-president of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers. “I am astonished and shocked that this many criminal proceedings in federal court escape public scrutiny or become buried.” .....

March 4, 2006, 11:35PM
Bush team attempting to plug leaks to journalists
Moves conflict with 'values it professes to be promoting abroad,' one top editor says

By DAN EGGEN
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.....